~ This Religion Called Voodou ~
A Spirituality of many complexities
similarities and dissimilarities.
Perhaps the most accessible-to-understand manifestation of the many, often diverging facets of Voodou, is in the differences in the essential natures of American Voudou and Haitian Vodou.
It takes a little understanding of the sociological and geographical histories of the two countries to make clear the reasons for, and factors informing, the two Voodous.
Haitian Vodou, sometimes called Sevis Gineh (“African Service”) is the primary culture and religion of the over eleven million people presently walking the roads of that once-beautiful & slowly-recovering island.
The primary roots of the Vodou religion in Haiti come from those people who were torn-away from their homelands and families among the Fon-Ewe peoples of West Africa (now called Benin) - once known as the Kingdom of Dahomey.
Additional roots include elements of the religions of the Ibo and Kongo peoples of Central Africa and the Yoruba of Nigeria, as well as a smattering of beliefs and practices of the Taino "Indians" - the original peoples of the Haitian island, who were literally obliterated by the heart- & soul-less Spanish conquistadors who literally worked that entire people to death.
Vodou - developed on Haiti's geographically and sociologically isolated circumstances to a greater extent than the those enslaved in America - became more strictly tradition-bound, with much less assimilation of outside influences than American Voudou.
In terms of the Christianity-factor, Vodou was impacted mainly by the Roman Catholicism of the Island's illicit Spanish and French propriators .
The Evanglical Protestant Christian Intrusion beginning immeadiately after the 2010 Earthquake, preaching their narrowly limited sexual morality standards, quickly and substantially perverted the formerly more relaxed, kindly and inclusive social paradigm of Haiti.
In regards to American Voudou, most slaves who were initially brought to the Thirteen British colonies, which later became the United States, were imported directly from Africa.
Before and after their arrival, Catholicism was the religion enforced upon them.
Indigenous Native Americans were also enslaved in the Colonies. Thus, American Voudou also includes rich & hearty spicing of Native American Spirituality.
Immigrants and castoffs from the Caribbean arrived at a later time, and Voudou became further informed by the religious paradigm of Haitian Vodou (when it was still in its infancy). While most Africans in America's past were considered chattle (property) a number of free Africans also immigrated to the States before and even during the Slavery Times.
And so, American Voudou has been influenced by a wider number of religious idiologies than Haitian Vodou.
One present example of assimilation of American spiritual cosmology into Voudou is the concept of Reincarnation.
Reincarnation has distinctly not been a belief in Voodou overall, because of the specific theology about the afterlife, in which most departed ancestors exist in a specific place (the astral city of La Ville Auz Campe) wherefrom many continue to maintain helpful interests in our earthly lives, with some even going on to take their place in the pantheon of Lwa who reside in the other-dimensional city called Hé.
Many American Vodouisants believe Marie Laveau - still popularly known as New Orlean's foremost Voodoo Queen - is now, or is becoming such a Lwa.
In recent decades, Reincarnation has become integrated in a number of American Voudou Houses, and accepted by more practitioners - due in large part to the non-African Voudou practitioners, many of whom have been strongly influenced the tenets of Witchcraft, Wicca and the New Age movement.
- My Mari Renman Etenel (beloved eternal husband) Jean-Baptist Bokor and I accept, as fact, Reincarnation because of our shared experiential memories of past lives together. This is detailed in our story told in the My Own Private Peristyle blog.
While there a shared fundamental tenets-of-faith, the philosophical, cosmological and theological intricacies of each Socyete is largely a matter of the training, experience and Lwa-relationships of its priestly leadership - the Queens, Kings, Houngans and/or Mambos of each such House.
Socyetes serve their own assortment of Lwa often with differing names, personalities, interpersonal relationships and empowerments, songs, drumbeats, and technicalities of Serimoni, as well as terminology and ceremonial Veves, dress and color combinations.
Furthermore, there are many Voodou-associated Religions - each with their unique beliefs, pantheons and practices in other countries - such as Brazil's Candomble, and Cuba's Lucumi/Santria.
Thus, Voodou is, to my Mind's Heart, the most beautifully wideranging Religion presently manifesting on Planet Earth.
Beni Ou,
Dieudonne Bokor
Copyright © 2019, Dieudonne Bokor (aka W.A. Ryan)
